


Don't forget

by HollowEmptyEyes



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Character Death, I'm so sorry, Mentioned Errink, One Shot, This could evolve into a full fic if I want it to
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-08
Updated: 2020-11-08
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:35:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27458101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HollowEmptyEyes/pseuds/HollowEmptyEyes
Summary: A mistake has been made. Someone pays the concequences.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 21





	Don't forget

He couldn’t remember where he was, who he was.  
…  
...  
He had a name, right?  
…  
…  
...  
What was it again?  
…  
…  
It was Ink, wasn’t it?  
…  
...  
But… What was he? Where was he?  
...  
He glanced down for a second at the scarf hung loosely around his collar bone with white, pinprick eyelights. It was covered in notes and scribbles, barely legible. The words blended and blurred together until he couldn’t tell one from the other. They seemed to spill from the soft fabric in an inky waterfall, impossible to read. Why were they doing that?  
…  
...  
He touched a gloved hand to his eye sockets. Tears had clouded them in a silent mist.  
…  
...  
But that couldn’t happen on its own, could it?  
…  
…  
...  
Why couldn’t it happen on its own?  
…  
His fingertips trailed down his cheekbone, brushing his neck and sliding past his shoulders until his hand came to rest upon his bare ribcage. Darkness roiled inside, screaming to be let out, thrashing against the tattooed bones until he was sure that they would crack. But they didn’t. He could feel no pain, no emotion, no nothing.  
…  
...  
But why?  
...  
He moved his hand further down to sit on top of the empty brown sash that was draped across his chest. Wasn’t it meant to hold something? He was sure it was. Something incredibly important that he mustn’t lose under any circumstances. Dream would be annoyed at him if that happened.  
…  
…  
Who was Dream again?  
…  
Sitting down slowly on the whiteness that stretched out infinitely around him, he reached again for his scarf, pulling it from where it was hung and scanning the messy handwriting. He had written that, hadn’t he? How long ago?  
…  
As he read in silence, he noticed the same words and names kept appearing over and over. Dream was one of them, as was Blue. He… knew them. They were like him. They were… They were… Guardians. That was it. They were his friends. Colour combinations also continuously popped up amongst the seemingly neverending stream of words. Why would he need those? Why would he….  
…  
Realisation hit him, though he didn’t feel shocked in the slightest. He had vials. At least, he used to. They let him feel. He had left them somewhere, after…..  
…  
...  
After what?  
…  
Shifting up onto his knees, he continued to gaze at the foreign words, the occasional droplet of ink falling from his eyes onto the fabric. There had to be something there that explained it, something that gave him a hint at what was going on.  
…  
Then he noticed something.  
...  
There was another word that came up far too much on his scarf. Or… was it a name? He didn’t know for sure.  
_Make sure not to give Error hugs, he doesn’t like them.  
Remember that Error’s favourite food is chocolate!  
Try to find time to visit Outertale! Error loves it there!  
Error likes to knit! Try to get him knitting needles as a gift sometime. _  
…  
What was Error?  
…  
…  
_Who _was Error?  
…  
Without warning, the steady trickle of tears flowing from his eye sockets became more of a river, rushing down his cheeks in waves and dripping onto the scribbles on his scarf. He hastily attempted to rub them away, trying desperately to keep the flood of black liquid away from that one name. He didn’t want to watch it disappear. Not like he had. Not like he had.  
____

“No… no no no _no no no! _”__

He clutched himself as sobs began to shake themselves from his chest in gasps and echo through the void that he was kneeling in. His body was mourning for something, for someone, without there being a single drop of blue paint in his system. Emptiness roiled inside his ribs. His fingers clutched the length of fabric resting in his palms and he pulled it close to his missing eyelights, rubbing his wet face against that name. His name.

He wasn’t sure when the memories came back to him.

Voices that weren’t his screamed and scratched in his skull. They yelled at him to stop, to drink from his vials, to find his friends, to do anything. But he didn’t. He couldn’t. He held up a fist, felt the rough bone of his palm against his trembling fingers, waited for the inevitable. Ink flowed unbidden across and through his phalanges, forming something that he couldn’t see. He didn’t need to see it. He only needed to know that it was sharp.

If Error could die, then he could too.

If he could kill Error, he could kill himself too.

His hand came swinging down towards his ribs and pierced the dark emptiness that those ribs caged in a single, almost practiced movement.

His jaw fell open in a silent scream.

And everything went white.

***

_“I….n”  
…  
…  
“...n….k!”_  
….  
….hmm?  
…  
_“I...nk! _Ink!”__

Sight slowly flickered back.

Ink gazed upwards from where he was lying. Wherever it was that he had been sleeping was soft. He couldn’t remember anything… soft. Come to think of it, he couldn’t remember ever falling asleep. He tried to shift his head in an attempt to get a better look at wherever he was with his still returning eyesight. What was it that he had been doing?

He choked as yellow paint was forcefully poured into his mouth. Boney hands held his head in place as they rammed a tiny vial past his teeth and emptied its contents. The golden liquid spilled over his tongue, lighting a fire inside him that had been out for months. As his eyelights flicked to stars and a smile spread on his face, a shout came from above him.

“INK! YOU’RE AWAKE!”

Hardly startled, he hummed in confirmation and turned in the direction of the noise, before being smothered in arms. He coughed a little and hugged the figure back. They were a skeleton, like him. Strange… weren’t skeletons supposed to be pretty rare?

“Weweresoworriedaboutyoubecauseyoudisappearedforlikethreeweeksandwehadnoideawhereyouwentandweweresoscaredbecauseyoudidnthaveyourvialsand*gasp*afterthatwholeerrorincidentyouwereactingreallystrangeand-”

Ink held up a hand, stopping the rant. He had recognised something in that stream of words. Something… important… what was it? He couldn’t quite put his finger on it…

“Ink! Thank the creators.”

Another voice appeared, this one soft and warm. The owner of said voice rushed over to hug him too. Another skeleton, looking quite similar to the first. Maybe they were brothers. As Ink received another long ramble about “how worried we were”, he had a chance to look around. He was in a small room with cream-coloured wallpaper covered in various doodles and paintings that had been done right on the wall. Very classy. He was sitting on a soft double bed with a soft yellow blanket that was currently draped over his lower body. An easel stood in the corner with an unfinished piece of artwork on its stand. The half-finished image depicted a tall, black skeleton with blue markings on his cheeks and strings dangling from his fingers. A comically large paintbrush stood on its end next to it, casting a long shadow across the carpeted floor. There was a desk, a closet, a bookshelf full of sketchbooks, and...

“...it was so difficult, not knowing where you had gone and… Ink are you even listening to me?”

Ink turned to look at the skeleton’s face. It showed a mixture of exasperation and worry etched into its smooth surface. He knew this person, didn’t he? What was their name…

“Nah, sorry. Also, what were your names again? I feel like I recognise you.”

The little golden skeleton gasped slightly, before understanding washed over his face. He turned to the other, slightly smaller skeleton and nodded, before facing the guardian again.

“Ink, how much… how much exactly do you remember?”

Ink tilted his head to the side in concentration, eyelights shifting to a pair of question marks.

“Well, I know my name… and I recognise both of you… oh! And that guy over there. I recognise him as well.”

He pointed with his right hand over at the easel in the corner of the room. Looking at the figure on the canvas filled his chest with a strange sort of warmth. The two standing by him exchanged a look, before the smaller of the pair spoke up.

“My name is Blue, and this is Dream. We help defend the multiverse from bad guys. You do too, of course, you’re the guardian of the AUs. And that person that you painted is your arch-nemesis, Er-”

“H-he’s nobody you need to worry about,” the golden skeleton (Dream, apparently) interrupted.

“Whoa… I actually painted that?” Ink sat up, eyelights brightening back to stars. “Damn, I’m good!” He smiled at his companions. “I’m sure I’ll remember you both fully soon. Don’t worry!” As he said this, he hopped off the bed and began making his way to the door, stretching as he went. “Sooo… what’s for breakfast?”

Watching after the guardian as he wandered out of the room, Dream turned to Blue.

“He _cannot _be allowed to remember who Error is. You saw what it turned him into a few weeks ago.”__

Blue stammered for a moment, before averting his eyes to the floor like a child being punished, face suddenly falling downcast. “You know he’ll remember over time. He always remembers eventually after doing… that…” He shifted uncomfortably.

“I know he will, but we’ll have to delay that for as long as possible.” Dream started towards the door, before he was stopped by a voice coming from behind him.

“He loved him, didn’t he?”

Dream sighed.

“Yes, he did. As much as someone like him could, anyway.”

He paused for a few moments, before continuing through the doorway, leaving Blue on his own in Ink’s abandoned room.

Blue turned towards the easel, standing lonely in the corner, accompanied only by the artist’s giant paintbrush. He walked up to the pixel-perfect image that had been painstakingly painted over many forgotten hours and touched a hand to it.

A tear rolled down his cheek and fell onto the floor.

“I miss you, you know?”

He chuckled to himself, before pursuing the other two downstairs.

The door clicked shut behind him.

Only silence followed.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so sorry for the angst my children... But if ya liked it then maybe I could turn it into something bigger and most likely sadder! Hooray for internal suffering! Also, in this strange multiverse, Ink basically loses almost all of his memories whenever he dies. Sad, right? :'3


End file.
